Segment VI
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William Miller
(1782-1849)
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An interesting
sequence of events occurred in the
United States just before the third
seal was broken. The story began on a
Sunday morning in 1816, when the Holy
Spirit changed the heart of William
Miller. Captain Miller was a
34-year-old army officer who had
settled in Low Hampton, New York,
after retiring from military service.
At the time, Miller was a
self-proclaimed deist. (Deists
believe in a Supreme Being, but they
deny the inspiration of the Bible and
hold a view of God that is contrary
to the Bible.) However, Miller had
two uncles that were Baptist
preachers, and even though he was not
a church member, he dutifully
attended services at the Hampton
Baptist Church with his believing
wife whenever his uncle, Elisha, was
preaching.
Because Miller did not
attend church when his uncle was
absent, certain members of the church
thought Captain Miller might be
persuaded to attend church more
regularly if he was asked to
participate. Therefore, they asked
him to read a selected sermon from
Proudfit’s Practical Sermons the
next time his itinerant uncle was
absent. To their surprise, Miller
agreed. A few weeks later, Miller was
called on to read the sermon one
Sunday morning. About half way
through the sermon on Isaiah 53,
Miller was overcome with a personal
realization of what he was saying,
Isaiah’s predictions about the
sufferings of Christ for our sins
caused Miller to stop and begin
weeping. He buried his face in his
hands and humbly sat down. Many in
the audience wept, too. The moving of
the Holy Spirit was overpowering that
wonderful morning and, from that day
forward, William Miller was a changed
man. He became a born again believer
in Christ and joined the Baptist
Church. After his conversion that
morning, Miller began to intensely
study the Bible. Two years later, in
1818, Miller concluded from the book
of Daniel that Jesus would return to
Earth “around 1843.” For
several years, Miller kept this
matter to himself for he thought he
was alone in this view.
Fifteen years after
becoming a born again Christian,
Miller began to feel a burden to
publicly share his discoveries in the
Bible. An invitation from his nephew
to speak to a small church group
initiated Miller’s “lay
ministry” in August 1831.
Because Miller’s views on the
Second Coming were unusual, word
spread. Miller gained the respect of
those who heard him even though he
was not highly educated. Miller was a
very bright person, a keen thinker,
well organized in his thoughts,
through in his research and most of
all, humble. In 1833, he was licensed
by a small group of Baptists
ministers so that he could preach in
surrounding Baptist churches. By
1844, Miller estimated that he had
personally delivered 4,500 lectures
on Bible prophecy to 500,000 people;
a remarkable feat when you consider
that he was about 50 years old when
he spoke to audiences without the
support of a public address system.
William Miller has few peers in early
American history. He was the
“Billy Graham” of his day.
Of course, as his popularity grew, so
did resistance. At the height of his
ministry, historians calculate the
Millerites (as his followers were
called) numbered between fifty and
one hundred thousand people. When
Jesus did not appear in 1843 or 1844
as predicted, Miller’s
credibility was ruined and he went to
his grave five years later bearing
the shame and stigma of a “false
prophet.”
Shortly after the
disappointment, Miller responded to
his critics saying, “I have
never courted the smiles of the
proud, nor quailed when the world
frowned. I shall not now purchase
their favor; nor shall I go beyond
duty to tempt their fate. I shall
never seek my life at their hands;
nor shrink I hope, from losing it, if
God in His good providence so
orders.” (The Prophetic Faith of
Our Fathers, by LeRoy Edwin Froom,
Volume IV, page 683) William
Miller died in 1849, broken in health
and finances. He had “bet the
farm” on the Second Coming of
Jesus and spent everything he owned
sharing the good news of
Christ’s return. He died
trusting Jesus as his Savior, but he
was unable to understand where he had
gone wrong.
Miller did not know in
1818 that several other Bible
students in the United States and
Europe had reached similar
conclusions. For example, five years
earlier, William Cunningham
(1776-1849) of Lainshaw, Ayshire
(Scotland) concluded the world would
end around 1843. William C. Davis
(1760-1831), a Presbyterian minister
in South Carolina came to an 1843
conclusion in 1818. In 1820,
Archibald Mason (1753-1831), of
Wishawton, Scotland, concluded the
world would end “around
1844.” It was not coincidental
that more than twenty-five writers in
Europe and the United Stated, having
no collaboration with William Miller,
came to the conclusion that the 2,300
days mentioned in Daniel 8:14 would
terminate around 1844. (See The
Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, by
LeRoy Edwin Froom, Volume III, pages
744, 745, published 1946 by the
Review and Herald Publishing
Association, Washington D.C.)
Miller Becomes
Interdenominational
In the early
nineteenth century, New England
Baptist churches were loosely
organized and rather independent of
each other. There were no telephones
or televisions. This isolation
explains how ministers in some areas
could accept Miller’s views
without causing a problem for the
Baptist denomination in general.
Because Miller was a layman and his
early efforts were confined to a
small geographical area, opposition
to Miller’s ministry was not
significant in the beginning. In
addition to this, Protestants in New
England were quite open to new ideas
from the Bible. There was deep
respect and interest in the Bible in
those days. (Remember, the
Declaration of Independence was only
55 years old when Miller began to
preach.)
Miller’s obscure
lay ministry was transformed into a
public phenomenon by the event that
occurred on November 13, 1833. That
particular night New England
experienced the most remarkable
meteoric shower that had ever been
witnessed. Ten of thousands of
falling stars were seen in New
England and portions of Europe. It
looked as though the whole sky was
falling! New Englanders panicked and
many thought the world was coming to
an end. This spectacular event
catapulted interest in Miller’s
message to a much larger stage and
Miller’s 17 years of study had
prepared him to explain his
understanding of the sixth seal to
wondering people. When it became
evident that Miller was unusually
qualified and informed on prophetic
matters, a group of 40 ministers
(half of whom were Baptists)
recognized Miller’s unique
ministry in 1835 by granting him a
license to speak in their affiliated
churches. The falling of the stars
overcame denominational barriers so
that non-Baptists could hear what a
self-taught Baptist preacher had to
say.
Miller’s Logic
Because Miller
believed that Daniel 8:14 pointed to
the Second Coming in 1843, Miller
naturally interpreted the falling of
the stars to be a prophetic sign that
Jesus would appear in about ten
years. He had no doubt that the
falling stars were a fulfillment of
Revelation 6:13. Consider his logic:
The sixth seal defines a sequence of
events that climax with the appearing
of Jesus in the clouds of Heaven.
These events include a great
earthquake, the darkening of the sun,
the falling of the stars and the
appearing of Jesus – in this
order. (Revelation 6:12-14) Appealing
to recent history, Miller reminded
his listeners of the Lisbon Portugal
earthquake on November 1,1755 where
60,000 people perished. This, he
claimed, fulfilled the great
earthquake in Revelation 6:12. Some
people remembered “the dark
day” of May 19, 1780. By noon on
that day, the sun became so dark in
New England that a person could not
see a white sheet of paper in front
of his face. Later that day, the moon
became the color of blood. The
animals came in from the field around
noon because the darkness was so
great. (There is historical evidence
that suggests the darkness was caused
by a massive volcano eruption in
Mexico.) Therefore, the great
earthquake (1755), the dark day
(1790), and the falling of the stars
(1833) during the past 78 years
proved to Miller that the sixth seal
had been broken. According to Miller,
the coming of Jesus had to be the
next event because Revelation 6:14
(the next verse that follows the
falling of the stars) describes the
appearing of Jesus in the clouds of
glory. When Miller demonstrated how
the 2,300 evenings and mornings of
Daniel 8:14 terminated in 1843, what
could people say? Many sincere
Protestants embraced Miller’s
message. Several influential pastors
joined Miller and a Millerite
movement formed. As Miller’s
teachings grew in popularity,
mainstream Protestant churches
circled the wagons by expelling
people from their churches for
“denying the faith once
delivered to the saints.”
When the Spring of
1843 passed and Jesus did not appear,
the Millerites poured over their
calculations and found a simple
mistake. They had overlooked one year
between 457 B.C. and 1843. Because
calendar years are not counted on a
mathematical scale, the transition
from B.C. to A.D. dating requires an
extra year because there are no zero
years. So, the 1843 date was
corrected to 1844 and 1844 became the
terminus of the 2,300 years of Daniel
8:14. The discovery renewed the hopes
of the Millerites and more
importantly, gave it one more year to
spread the doctrine of the imminent
Second Coming. However, the Spring
and Fall of 1844 came and went
without a Second Coming. Jesus did
not appear and the Millerite movement
imploded in bitter disappointment.
The Millerite fiasco caused many
Protestant churches particularly
Baptists, to distain the study and
meaning of prophecy.
No one knew it at the
time, but the dazzling meteoric
shower that night was predictable.
Earth annually passes through a
debris field in space created by the
orbiting comet, Tempel-Tuttle around
mid-November. As a result, we
regularly see meteoric showers of
“falling stars” appearing
to come from the constellation of Leo
about mid-November. Hence, these
“falling stars” are called
Leonids. We now know that earth
passes through the densest part of
the comet’s debris field every
thirty-three years. Sometimes, the
thirty-third year produces a
spectacular display of shooting stars
as it did in 1833. The debris field
of Temple-Tuttle and the thirty-three
year cycles of “shooting
stars” were discovered thirty
years later in 1863 by Yale College
professor, Hubert Newton.
Fifth Essential
Doctrine Rediscovered
After the Millerite
movement collapsed, most of the
Millerites renounced their faith or
sheepishly returned to their
churches. A few Millerites, however,
did not give up. They returned to
their Bibles to try to figure out
what went wrong and soon discovered
the problem. Miller interpreted the
cleansing of the sanctuary in Daniel
8:14 to mean Earth would be purified
of the wicked people at the Second
Coming. After carefully
comparing the books of Hebrews,
Leviticus and Daniel, they concluded
that Miller’s view on the 2,300
years were correct, but the sanctuary
to be cleansed was the true temple
which was in Heaven. (Leviticus
16; Hebrews 8 and 9) In other words,
Jesus began cleansing Heaven’s
temple in 1844.
From my point of view
today, Miller’s ministry and
disappointment served two purposes.
First, Miller brought attention to
Daniel 8:14 as no one else had.
Second, the essential doctrine of
God’s use of parallel temples
was rediscovered as a result of
Miller’s disappointment. The
Holy Spirit accomplished as
astounding success. After the
Millerite implosion passed, there
were people on Earth who understood
that the judgment bar of Christ in
Heaven’s temple had begun!
Naturally mainstream Protestantism
was rather pleased that the Millerite
movement had disappeared, but out of
the ashes of Miller’s
disappointment, a new church group
formed that would become known as the
Seventh-day Adventist Church. This
church group organized about twenty
years after the disappointment (1863)
– the same year Hubert Newton
figured out the thirty-three year
cycle of the shooting stars.
The story of William
Miller and the formation of the
Seventh-day Adventist church are
germane to the breaking of the third
seal. The Holy Spirit raised a humble
Baptist preacher to draw attention to
the commencement of the judgment bar
of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10; Daniel
8:14) just like He used a Catholic
monk to draw attention to
justification through faith. (Romans
1:17) As a denomination, Baptists
rejected Miller’s prophetic
views before his ministry imploded in
1844. Because traditional Baptists
could not accept the doctrines of
God’s use of parallel temples,
God’s seventh day Sabbath, and
soul sleep, the Holy Spirit raised a
new church to proclaim these
essential Bible truths.
The wonderful thing
about religious liberty in the United
States is that people are free to
study the Bible and believe whatever
they wish to believe! This freedom
enabled Miller to proclaim a truth
whose time had come. Miller
discovered the 2,300 days of Daniel
8:14 ended in the Spring of 1844 and
from my studies affirm the validity
of his claim. I am also convinced
that the Holy Spirit raised the
Seventh-day Adventist Church to
compile Luther’s rediscovery of
salvation through faith in Jesus,
Congregationalist view on soul sleep,
the Seventh Day Baptist view on the
observance of God’s seventh day
Sabbath, Miller’s views on the
Second Coming, and the subsequent
rediscovery of God’s use of
parallel temples. Adventists merged
these five doctrines into a
harmonious system of understanding,
but Seventh-day Adventists, like all
churches, have not been willing to
follow advancing light. This is a
true paradox. Churches can form
around a truth whose time has come,
but they seem incapable of moving
beyond that point when additional
truth unfolds later. In this sense,
Seventh-day Adventists have followed
in the footsteps of Protestant
churches that have not been able to
move forward with advancing light.
People will understand the darkness
that currently holds Catholics and
Protestants prisoner (their
traditional prophetic views) when the
next seal is broken!
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